Rub a Dub Dub

For the past few weeks her ladyship has continued with quest to remove every last bit of paint from the staircase woodwork, this includes not only the numerous spindles but the whole beautiful wooden structure of the stairs and hallway. This task cannot be underestimated, so far, it has taken 4 heat guns, 10 scrapers, 2 tins of chemical stripper and 2 wire brushes just to get to the stage ready for sanding.
I think we can safely say that the best way by far of removing numerous layers of old paint is by heat gun and scraper, her ladyship has perfected the technique of heating the paint to a plastic state where all the layers of the old paint "easily" peel away from the wood in one scrape, the paint peelings then fall to the floor, solidify and become brittle ready to be swept up.
 I think we can also safely say that chemical stripper is next to useless, the stuff does not work on the paintwork we are dealing with!

Whilst the task so far has consumed many hours of sheer determination and patience we have to go over the woodwork again with sand paper to get the wood back to its original state. This will be done with power tools, over the last few months we have amassed quite an impressive array of tools specifically for this, we have belt sanders, orbital sanders, detail sanders, sheet sanders, disc sanders, angle grinders, all shapes and sizes of palm sanders not to mention every size and type of wire brush attachments for power drills. So with more patience and determination we can prepare for the next step which will be stain or paint?